Joining Our Nation Blog

Scott Wilson, political reporter for the Washington-Post, observes the far right is now rising in the ranchlands of Northern California, using special elections and veiled intimidation to gradually eliminate traditional Republican elected officials and to spread their new political influence across a historically conservative region of a deeply blue state.

Civility is disappearing, he concludes, even as political agendas are changing. One wonders, then. Where does America go from here, in the post-President Donald Trump era?

Researcher Barbara Walter describes her immigrant father’s experience in pre-World War II Germany, and its comparison with Donald Trump’s campaigns for the American presidency. He doubled down, Walter says, on an almost White supremacist strategy, like her father observed before becoming a naturalized American in 1958.

The only way a Trumpian strategy can work, observes Walter, is if it becomes implemented in the face of a dramatic weakening of America’s civic institutions, including the political institutions undergirding free elections.

The “alt-right” believes adherents are under assault by multicultural forces relying on strategies that include “political correctness” to undermine “whiteness.” Researcher Barbara Walter explains two conditions for civil war to ignite, perhaps at the hands of these individuals. One occurs when a democratic society evolves into some mix that also combines some form of totalitarianism. The other occurs when government becomes less about political ideology and more about identity politics.